BBC Worldwide launching indie publishing

Simon Harris, executive producer of the BBC commercial subsidiary BBC Worldwide, has said that his company will be launching a British indie publishing initiative ‘in a few weeks’.

Speaking at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Harris outlined the international publishing aims of the initiative, which already boasts the involvement of several unnamed UK studios.

“We really want to start motivating British development talent,” Harris said.

“In a few weeks time you will see our first initiative around UK indies. We’ve come up with a plan and we are working with a couple of indies already, looking to get them into business outside of the UK.”

In a session titled ‘From TV to Games and Back Again’, Harris was keen to impress the necessity for the indie UK games market to expand globally. He also hinted a huge growth in BBC Worldwide’s platform presence in the future.

“The UK market is a really good, really substantial gaming market, but to be really successful you have to work worldwide,” he said.

“We have Facebook titles under development, were working on consoles, Flash and XBLA and PSN. Over the next year you will hopefully start seeing a lot of innovation from us.”